I had a really fun night last night. We had Disrupt Youth Church, with a western theme night, so we ate ’sloppy joes’ and dressed up like cowboys… saw salvation, it was good. Afterwards, took a bit of an effort to do the cleanup – hay really does stick to the carpet like nothing else – but my friend Tiffany came and stayed the night. We stayed up till like 4.30am, talking, having chocolate fondue, and talking more… it was really good to have her over and to spend time together. The result was that I didn’t wake up till 12.30 today… so I’m in the prayer room overnight, and will be attempting to stay up for a few hours to pray.

Once I’m here after 10pm, I’m here till 5am… my license means that I can’t drive between 10pm and 5am, so until i get my full… I’m here. I have a sleeping bag, and there’s a foldout sofa in the solitary room, so while I do this by myself I’ll be sleeping in there…

Waffles, I say?

I’ve been eating unhealthily for the last few days…. really need to find that gym. This morning Lisa and I were meant to go to DressSmart – the outlet mall – but I woke up about 9am and my bed was so warm… outside was so cold…. so we stayed home and made waffles.

 Have you ever noticed how if you buy a four-pack of icecream (four flavours in the same tub) they all taste like each other? We bought one with chocolate, cookies and cream, vanilla and goody goody gumdrops (bubblegum with jubes.) They all taste faintly like bubblegum, so I shied away from the icecream this morning.

In other news, I found my wallet. It’s been missing for 5 weeks and I had already got new credit card / eftpos details, but hadn’t got a new drivers license yet. So, now I don’t have to pay $30 to get my license reissued…yay! My big adventure of later-after-work is going to be learning to drive a manual car… yes, I’ve been driving for 18 months and can still only drive an automatic… so Drew will teach me to drive in his one. It’s nice and sporty-looking and makes lots of noise. I’m probably a secret boy-racer at heart.

Chicken Biryani

It felt a little like India tonight. It was about 12 degrees instead of 45 (I talk in Celcius), and I was driving my car instead of being in a rickshaw, but I had the same heavy feeling as whenever we ate rice in India. It was a peculiar feeling, but after eating a rice-based dish, for example the Biryani at Paradise, you feel heavy. The food sits in your stomach.

I made Indian food tonight (personal first), and while it wasn’t quite the same colour as what we ate, it tasted fairly similar. The people I was feeding liked it. I’m loving living with my sister, because she cooks good… and variety! So far we’ve had a spicy lentil soup, herbed chicken pies, cowboy pie (macaroni, potato, meat and cheesy stuff… like shepherds pie and macaroni mixed, I guess.)  and a really really yummy gourmet pizza, with lots of my ‘unlikeables’ on it. Including feta cheese, and mushroom, and salami, so she’s a pretty decent cook to get me to eat those.

What to do with myself?

45 hours into my non-week of church and prayer room, and it’s already going pretty slowly. I’ve got some plans… I’m going to finish cleaning my room (time estimated: 90 minutes) and cook dinner tonight (time estimated: maybe an hour, depends how many repeats I need to do to get it right.) I’m trying to upload photos onto facebook via dialup, which is a nightmare – 10 minutes and number one is still going. Hopefully I’ll get time to catch up with people outside of church and not talk about any church-related stuff… I’m going on a walk, at some stage, in the Belmont National Park, and will be borrowing cookbooks and cooking lots.

My prayer for this week away is that I’ll get clarity. I don’t have to know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life (admittedly, it would be nice.) but just what comes next. I had a pretty clear word from the Lord when I was in India to come home… but since I got here, there hasn’t been any definitive ‘walk in this way,’ so I’ve just been doing what’s before me, getting into the prayer room, and jobhunting. I need something a bit more solid than what I’ve had so far to continue doing what I’m doing, because for all I know, it could be time to move on.

I spent some time with my mentor at the mall on Thursday (which is what prompted the take-a-definitive-week-out) and she pointed out that I didn’t really take any time out before getting fully involved to decide what it is that I want to do. I want to make sure that I’m here because I’m here out of desire – but also that my desire comes from the right motives. For all I know, this is just comfort zone, however strange it is after coming back from DTS. I know I’m called to prayer, but I don’t want to wind up an eighty year old lady who hardly ever left here under the guise of ‘commitment to the hope centre prayer room’ when I know that I’m called to go as well.

It’s been fascinating over the last few days however. God’s really been reminding me of one of the nations on my heart – America. It’s not the average missions-destination, and I’m fully aware of that. Just like I’m aware every time I meet new people that I don’t sound like a Kiwi – I have a strange accent which right now most people think is American or Canadian. And I had that before I ever went to the USA, and before I spent six months of DTS with a bunch of North Americans. But I’ve been emailing a friend-of-a-friend who lives in Oregon, and something is quietly awakening again. I’m not sure what it is or how it’ll look… but I know that I’m ‘called’ (aka, I have a heart for, there’s something I need to do there) to the United States of America…

God bless the USA!

I finally realised…

It’s 2 years, 7 months and 4 days since we first launched our ‘putsy little prayer room’ on December 10, 2004.

I’ve finally realised something that is probably what’s going to save my prayer life and enable me to keep going for the long-run. It probably would have been helpful if I’d realised it a while ago… but this is it. I can’t actually do this by myself.

I’m sure everyone else twigged onto this a while ago, but somehow I missed the class which explained that I’m not capable of having a sustainable prayer life all by myself. I did a fairly good job for the first six months, then it was regulated by internship in 05, through 2006 I justified the times of lack in my prayer stuff by the fact I was busy in the office… but I’m home from DTS now and I in myself can’t.

But the Lord can. I’m called to prayer… but ultimately, it’s not my issue how it happens. I don’t have to strive to do this (and here’s the amazing part of this… it’s not my burden to bear all alone) because God wants me here, God likes me here… he’s going to help me with this.

Fairly elementary… but perhaps the realisation that I don’t have to do this by myself will enable me to keep going rather than give up.

It was my birthday!

And it was kind of surprising… some people knew, some didn’t so really it was a very very anticlimatic day. I spent the day at Godspace… through some weird quirk at our church, we have two different events called Godspace. One is weekly – it’s our corporate Tuesday night prayer room meeting (which evolved from the prayer room time that used to happen after Disrupt Youth Church.) The other happened this weekend – it’s the annual kids conference hosted by our church but run by a combined team from throughout Wellington.

So there were maybe 100 kids there… think they were hoping for more… but it was pretty sweet. I did registrations in the morning, went and bought lots of candy at the supermarket, went and bought two snapper at the fish shop… waited for Kristen to finish gutting the fish for the ‘guystuff’ for all the little boys… drove him home, came to my parents, had lunch, went back for signouts, hung out at Michelle’s place with Michelle and Kristen-girl and Tiffany and her siblings… went back for prayer meeting, stuck around for a bit of worship then headed up to my brother-in-law’s parents house where I gatecrashed a going away party for Drew’s friend who is joining the navy. Bit of an interesting day… only semi-embarrassing moment was when all the Godspace leaders broke into happy birthday at about 3.30pm.

Right now I’m living between two homes and I have the possibility of a third. I have been staying in my sister’s room for two weeks while she is in Europe, and I’ve just moved all my stuff to the spare room at Lisa’s house (she is sister who is married) where I plan to live… but now I just found out I could possibly rent a bedsit for a month or so, meaning I’d have more of my own space which might be nice but it might also be nice to stay with Lisa. I’m sleeping on it.

Still on a job hunt… need something to turn up but I’m being a little fussy because I need to pray.

I’m also having a midlife crisis. More details when I work out what that means

So, for all my non-blog readers… such ends the mystery of this day, and yet another undeep post.